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Friday, January 31, 2014

Road Trip Chapter 11

11. Time & Angels

I spring to my feet at the fear in
Jay’s voice even as every door, window and wall of the house
explodes inward, pieces of wood and glass and steel glimmering in the
air to hurtle elsewhere and vanish in a twisting of the air.

“Every piece, hurled into them like a
billion knives,” she says with a smile as sharp as the bones of the
house had been. “Enough magic to murder every minion they could
create or summon.”

“And now?” he says.

“Unless you have a miracle?” The
magician shakes his head and Leona’s gaze flicks to Jay, who is
still grabs my hand and tries to drag me away, giving up on trying
with the magician. “Then we see what they will do, won’t we?”

“It is too early for that.”

“There are two of us. That’s all
and it: we’re good, but numbers count and they’ve spent a long
time being seriously pissed off at us. We can hurt them. Maybe even
destroy them. But we can’t do that and
close the opening they’ll make into the world.”

“Yes,” the magician says. “Charlie,
keep Jay safe. Jay, keep Charlie safe. Leona: be prepared to close
the way they make into the world. There are options other than
magic.”

“Honcho,” Jay says, his voice small
and scared.

I keep silent, because Leona has turned
pale and just nods her head tightly.

The magician smiles for a moment, and
makes to speak when the world falls apart. The air is simply gone,
replaced by sickly shadows from which actual demons and angels
emerge, the latter on gossamer wings of light, the former engulfed in
blue-black flames. I can see fires behind the fires, wings beyond the
wings as they spill out into the world in alien fractals. They smile,
and their smiles are cruel and bleak, and their laughs are alien and
hungry chitterings as the world seems to push at them. Vines wreathe
up from the earth only to fall away, the earth around them buckling
as trying to hurl them away.

The god inside me rears up and out:
claws, fur and teeth engulf me in a roar of power and rage and for a
moment – just one – there is nothing to me save its hunger and
power, but a hand gripping mine tightly pulls me back as Jay glares
up at me and screams, “If you fall apart I’m going to get mad!”

“Okay. Okay.” I bare my teeth;
demons and angels fall back from me. A few begin to circle, eyes
locked hungrily on Jay, whispers of ‘human food’ passing among
them in tones like drowning babies. I flex claws, call up hunger, and
know I’m going to die. There are too many, and more with each
moment as if each one was unfolding others from itself.

The magician coughs. Nothing more, but
he seems solid, more real, as
if the world was a poor chalk drawing around him as he stands, hands
shoved deeply into pockets. He takes a breath. A second. A third.
Demons and angels swarm, only to fall back from him as Leona weaves
wards and curses and hurls them with brutal efficiency. Each
is visible, a blaze of violet or red flaring against demons and
angels, holding them away as one would the tide.

I
slice and stab with claws and
teeth, tear into them with hunger and watch demons falls back. Each
one that swings at me is met by Jay, and fire and blades of light
slide off his skin without leaving a mark at all. We are dancing, and
all know it, and they are toying with us at a tempo we can hold,
savouring their victory and laughing at our weakness.

The
magician takes a fifth
breath, leans back, and screams.

The sound isn’t
human, not at all even though it comes from a human throat. It sounds
like the cry of an eagle mixed with a crow and something higher and
deeper by far. The god inside me folds in, fleeing deep with a speed
that leaves me sore and breathless, and the sound drives me to my
knees a moment later. Leona is already curled up, hands over her
head. Jay is gripping my right hand in both of his but seems
untouched by the sound even as the magician drops to his knees and
begins coughing up blood while Leona staggers to her feet and
gestures into the air before collapsing unconscious to the ground.

Whatever was out
there, whatever it looked like, is simply gone. No demons. No angels.
The air entirely normal as if nothing had happened at all. Only the
hole where a house had been remained as a sign; that and the eerie
silence about us devoid of a single insect or animal. That and Jay
letting go of my hand to bolt over to the magician, hovering over him
anxiously.

Jay pales and – then he fades. That’s
the only word I have for it. He pulls the world around him like a
cloak and is simply gone, vanishing from sight a moment before a
being imprints itself on the world in front of the magician. It has
male features, a translucent creature that is very much an it, devoid
of clothing and as pale as unfallen snow from the hair to eyes.

“Huh,” it says, the voice entirely
human. “Among those who’ve learned my name, I wouldn’t have
figured you likely to invoke it.”

“Nor would I,” the magician says,
his smile as exhausted his voice. “Charlie, this is Arth’Ba’Toch.
Arth, Charlie.”

“I am called Winter on this world,”
the entity says, and smiles almost shyly to me before looking about.
“Why did – ah,” it says, gaze flicking past me into the
distance. “I see. You always did have a knack for making
interesting bargains.”

The magician bows, but his gaze doesn’t
leave the other person at all. “Your aid comes at a cost.”

“It does.” Winter sounds tired.
“And those who are outside the universe cannot pay it even if they
should.”

I keep quiet, unable to not look at
Winter. It – he – is translucent, but what I’m seeing through
him isn’t this world as all as much as whirls and colours, shapes
and forms at once alien and familiar.

“Winter,” the magician says mildly.

Winter blinks, and his skin is just
pale skin a moment later. “My apologies. I have few dealings with
god eaters.” He cocks his head to the side. “Did you consider
eating me, Charlie?”

I blink and shake my head a moment
later; I hadn’t even tried and the god inside me is cowering as
deeply as it ever has. “No.” Nothing else: I don’t want to know
what this thing is, or what it might do. That much I’m certain of.

A flash of something like hurt crosses
his face before Winter turns back to the magician. “You’ve made a
choice, then.”

“Leona. And myself. She caused this.”

“Her life is forfeit to others for
her – changes,” Winter says smoothly. “What she has left and
yourself would not be enough.”

“I can offer my father.”

Winter smiles sadly. “You could. And
I would be bound to accept such a thing, but what happened here is
not your failure, magician. You are in debt to the powers that walk
between, and this debt I give to you to balance your books against
them.”

The magician freezes, his face an open
book of shock for a moment. “You would do this for me? Why?”

“Because of what will come. And
because no one deserves a fate they cannot fight. The world has
prisons enough without adding more, and powers enough without forcing
such a burden on another.” And Winter doesn’t move, but is no
longer Winter. His voice is impossible, a crushing weight on the
world that was colour as much as noise, images as much as words.
“What I am should not be sought out.”

Somehow the
magician stands even as I’m staggering back rubbing my ears. “No
kidding,” is all he says, so dry and casual it helps me keep my
feet.

Winter
blinks, and the awful pressure of him on the world fades. “Then
you should not have asked.”

And the magician
lets out a small, weak laugh at that and bows. “Probably not. I
would thank you, but I’m wise enough to know one doesn’t thank a
true power.” He straightens and holds Winter’s gaze, his own
leeched of humour. “I will do what I can to prevent another power
such as yourself from being born, and I do this freely.”

Winter’s answer
is a summery smile that seems to linger in the air as he is simply
gone, his absence a relief. I don’t realize how desperate my
breaths had been or how hard my heart was hammering off-key in me
until he has left. “Holy shit,” I say.

“Shit, yes. Not
holy,” the magician says, slipping into himself with almost no
effort. He walks over, ignoring the unconscious Leona. “Jay ran
west. We’ll need a car to follow him.”

“That’s
it?” I said as we were halfway into the next field. “We’re just
leaving Leo – Leona – whatever, there?”

The magician sighs. “I can’t
explain away what Leona did nor why. What is real about ourselves –
what is true, as much as we can be true to ourselves – are the
things we most hide from the world. Very often all that makes us
unique are the facets of ourselves no one ever sees.”

“She wanted to die and take you with
her. Because you both survived when everyone else died.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.”

“We could always go back and ask
her,” I snap.

He smiles then, that one smile of sad
wisdom that says he is a magician so clearly it almost hurts to see.
“What makes you think she knows?”

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”